Seeing and Believing
by nougamis
Summary: There's betrayal in his voice, underneath the fury that he's become so much better at handling in the past five years, because — really — how could he have been naive enough to believe the Mist Guardians when fabricating reality is part of the job description?


"Unbelievable." He spits the word out like tobacco, harsh and sudden and a brown stain on the otherwise pristine reputation of his _all-important_ Vongola Decimo.

"Un-be-_fucking_-lievable."

(She doesn't flinch.)

It's times like these when she realizes how apt the nickname 'Smokin' Bomb Hayato' is for him, because even without the cigarette and dynamite it looks like he's about to explode from sheer anger.

If looks could kill, she would be nothing more than a black pile of ash on the overly plush rug beneath her boots.

She's already spoken with Boss, with Ninth, with the other Guardians — so there's no reason for him to be glaring her to pieces, because hasn't the entire ordeal already been settled? (Especially considering the fact that he's _the_ right-hand man, but then again —

— it's probably for that reason alone that he's even deigning to speak with her.)

"What the fuck were you _thinking_?" he hisses, as if his words are Uri's claws, able and all-too-willing to rip her apart on the spot. "Were you even thinking _at all_?"

She blinks.

He gets angrier. "Fucking _answer_ me, Dokuro." He stands closer now, and she's struck by how much he's grown; he's towering over her, jaw clenched and eyes furious and _clearly_ at the end of his already-short fuse.

(Again, Smokin' Bomb Hayato.)

It's amusing, too, the way he looks at her, because she knows what the others think of her — of _him_. She's the shadow in the corner of the room, gone as soon as she's noticed, about as frequent a figure in the Vongola base as the Cloud Guardian, and … well.

They all know where her loyalties lie.

What they don't seem to be aware of — except Boss, because he notices _everything _— is how closely she watches all of them. The man in front of her, in particular, is one of the easiest to read. (There's a vein in his forehead that bulges ever-so-slightly when he's upset, and — oh, there it is.)

Chrome looks at him and blinks again. "I was going to free Mukuro-sama."

Then there's that tension in his neck, like he's straining not to bite her head off. "_Why_ —"

"Because he is important to me."

"You're fucking —"

"Insane? No." She smiles, an expression that somehow conveys more emptiness than it does actual emotion. "Desperate … perhaps."

"What about —"

"Boss?" His teeth click together in frustration as she cuts him off for a third time, and she decides now isn't the time to remind him that grinding his teeth is bad for them. "He knew."

He knew it was going to happen, because it should have been obvious to anyone with eyes — hyper intuition or not — that she would do it one day.

It just happened to be _now_, rather than next week or next month or next year.

"I'm sorry," and the vehement rejection of her apology dies in his throat under the weight of her stare, "but I had to at least _try_."

There's a film of guilt over her heart that constricts when she recalls the tired, defeated look on Boss' face, but she remembers the cold and silence and _nothingness_ of Vendicare.

Boss has his Guardians, his friends, his family.

(He can bear the loss of three rejects.)

She falls silent.

"I should have fucking known better," are the words to shatter the quiet, "than to trust _you_."

There's betrayal in his voice, underneath the fury that he's become so much better at handling in the past five years, because — really — how could he have been naive enough to believe the Mist Guardians when fabricating reality is part of the job description?

She and her Master are liars by trade.

The best lies are steeped in truth, however, which is why she knows that he would never understand —

never understand that she risked her life for a man who was just as likely to throw it away as he was to keep it because it has never been her life to begin with,

never understand that she risked the reputation of the famiglia because she knew and trusted its Boss enough to repair the damage she's done,

never understand anything but the wound of betrayal she cut with her knife of lies _despite_ the fact that they are more similar than he will ever realize.

(He is blinded by his loyalty, just as she is by her own.)

So she smiles again. "Yes. You should have."

(For Boss, he would have done the same. If only he could _see_.)

There's a weapon pointed at her face, a gaping skull about ready to devour her. "How _dare_ —" his jaw works furiously, though it takes another moment for the words to return, "— I should fucking kill you here and save Tenth the trouble."

Chrome closes her eye. "I'm sorry, but I can't let that happen."

And suddenly he's glaring at nothing but a faint indigo haze that dissipates into nothing a few moments later. There's disbelief at first, followed in quick succession by another round of anger and indignation.

He expects her to show up again, maybe in a week or two, and he's more-than-prepared to give her a giant piece of his mind coupled with gratuitous amounts of swearing and incendiaries, but —

— she's _gone_.


End file.
